Ring magazine is officially lost it

He was reported to have had another 8 fights previous to his ones on boxrec.

The records from this era are woefully incomplete

 

I think that his quality caveat is strongly implied every time someone complains that a heavyweight feasted on smaller men.

Technically, you could probably find large journeymen or sub-journeymen on most champions' records. But that wouldn't be considered a convincing rebuttal. So too with Jeffries's dried out husk, albeit maybe not to the same degree.

If somebody complains that Peter had trouble with larger opponents, it would do no good to rave about his KO of Julius Long. Or to defend Monte Barrett from a similar accusation by citing his fight with Tye Fields.

 

You can for whatever opinion you want about a fighter's era, but there have to be caveats to that.

If the men that they beat, were the best available, then they cant do any more!

If the big men that they beat, were the best available, and were heavily hyped, then they can't do any more!

Johnson met those criteria.

He only stumbled when a formidable small man came along!

 

If literally the only other boxers in my era are Alexis Arguello and Butterbean, and I give them both title shots, then I've done my job as a heavyweight champion. Fine. Sure.

But it would be ludicrous for me to claim that beating those two is the same level of difficulty as cleaning out Tyson's heavyweight division just because they were "the best available."

"The best available" isn't necessarily good enough.

 

FOREMAN OVER HOLY?

 

Sam McVea--So much of this dismissal depends on "facts" which may not be accurate. Are we certain he was born in 1884 as Wikipedia states? He was born in a rural Texas county in the 1880's (?). A black baby born in the old west. Were good records kept? If McVea is three or four years older it changes everything. A newspaper report from 1902 has him having five fights in Australia! So he had already apparently moved around and been a world traveler and boxed in other countries. Quite a few fights falling through the cracks changes everything.
What we do know for certain about McVea is his reputation when he was fighting Johnson. I came across a newspaper report in a San Francisco newspaper in the days following the second Jeffries-Corbett fight about the viable contenders left. The two men mentioned were Johnson and McVea. The paper pointed out there weren't any white contenders of the same stature.
I know this newspaper opinion about McVea is actual. I am not sure we know with any certainty if his stated birthdate or number of fights are accurate.

Jeffries--was an undefeated former champion considered by many, and possibly most, as the greatest heavyweight who had yet lived. The whole boxing world demanded his return. He was the betting favorite. It certainly looks on film like he got into good shape. In the event Johnson handled him easily, so he must be totally dismissed, although he had no other fights. Johnson might have been able to best him years earlier for all we know. Certainly Dempsey's destruction of the even older, visibly overweight, and long laid off Willard is treated in a completely different manner. The Ring article emphasizes this fight as proving Dempsey's greatness.

Weak eras--the problem with this is that no one fights anyone out of his era so how exactly do we determine this? Top guys having a lot of losses? Well, only one team has gone undefeated in the NFL since the 1920's. All sorts of college football teams go or have gone undefeated. The reason is not tougher competition but lesser competition. Why is it automatically different in boxing?

What we do know about Jack Johnson is that he was the best in the world for quite a while and one of the best for an extremely long period.

 

The Ring , The Bible of Boxing, lost all its credibility the day Oscar took it over, fired the good writers & turned it into a publicity rag for the GBP

 

Jim would never sniff an unbias mans top 25HWs.

 

I mean- Bivins is underrated but wtf lol

 

Perhaps every person in the world who's familiar with boxing is hilariously wrong, and the demented electronic ghost of Bert Sugar that inhabits the Boxrec mainframe is onto something.

Bivins for GOAT.

 

Bert Sugar is dead? wait- just googled it Jesus he died 8 years ago!
I have said in countless threads I wanted to choke him to death with his fedora... That is messed up looking back

Also... yeah... uh Bivins GOAT... Jesus

 

I don't see how you could not have him in your top 25.

He has comfortably the best title reign prior to Joe Louis.

Very dominant.

Undefeated before his ill advised comeback against Jack Johnson.

 

If the two best heavyweight contenders were Alexis Arguello and Butterbean, and they had legitimately proved it, then how would you know that Tysons opponents were better then them?

Even if you strongly suspected it, then how would you prove it?

 

What do you mean by "proved"? Are you asking for the level of certainty expected of a mathematical proof here?

It's not a question of proving, IMO, but a question of best explanation of the facts. If I see a "heavyweight" division literally consisting of three people, and two of those three are a lightweight and an obese man who demonstrates limited skills on film and can only fight four rounds (respectively), I will draw the reasonable conclusion that this division is rather poor. I will make this judgment based on the fact that, in the present era, 130 pound fighters and obese unskilled men with no stamina do not typically win heavyweight titles.

Conversely, how could anyone even provide an argument that being verbally labeled a "heavyweight contender" makes a fighter capable of beating good heavyweights? That borders on magical thinking to me, as if being publicly declared a "heavyweight contender" is a magic spell that confers boxing prowess on people.

 

I’m sorry- but Joe Louis’s one win over Max Schemling is worth more then Jeff’s entire career.